There are acute and chronic stressors that appear to have interwoven and cumulative effects on the human body with regard to some disease processes. Both stimuli cause harm when a negative emotional response is elicited. A negative emotional response leads to activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the hypothalamic/pituitary axis. This negative emotional response may be complicated by inadequate health maintenance. Stress is a physiological effect on the body caused by the negative emotional response to either internal or external stimulus. When unchecked physiologic changes occur in the body due to a negative emotional response, the result can contribute to increased risk of physical and psychological disease. For example, stress contributes to the effects of colds, depression, HIV/AIDS, slowed wound healing, infections, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and cardiovascular disease. Jobs that are perceived by a worker as hectic or highly demanding and that do not allow the worker individual decision making opportunities and personal freedoms are environmental factors that over time lead to job-related stress. The purpose of this invention is to provide a means to recognize, evaluate, and measure underlying emotions that have a negative effect on health.
While there are many different levels of tolerance of stress, it is far more common for people to totally ignore signs of stress within the body, which signify underlying fears, worries and doubts than it is for them to have a high tolerance level for stress. Over time, especially if a person is suppressing knowledge of stress and anxiety within the body, the end result is depression and anger that is turned inward and which may result in disease and disintegration of the body.
Because factors that increase or relieve emotional stress are often ignored or disregarded, there is a need to provide a mechanism to evaluate the stress a particular individual perceives during the day. This invention provides a mechanism for users to be cognizant of the factors that contribute to stress and record the associated changes in their wellbeing due to these stress factors.